Something More Than Hatred
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Alternate scene for "Into the Dalek". What if, during the mind-link, Rusty picked up on the Doctor's memories of Oswin?


Something More Than Hatred

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

"_I – see – your – hatred - of – the – Daleks – and - it – is - good."_

"Hatred? No – no, there must be somethin' else!"

But he couldn't help it. Just the sight of one trundling along in its armored casing, fixating him with its single blue-lit eyestalk, was enough to turn his stomach. He had fought them for too long.

He remembered all their victims. Explosions bloomed across his mind's eye, Dalek ships blowing apart in fire and steel as Gallifrey vanished. He felt the bitter triumph of them as if it were yesterday: _Let them annihilate each other. _They were monsters, and they had forced his own people to become monsters in the attempt to destroy them. It was their fault he had believed himself the destroyer of his homeworld for centuries, and even now could not permit himself to bring Gallifrey back, for fear of starting the war all over again. The Daleks had taken away his home. He could never forgive them.

And yet – and yet – if he couldn't give Rusty something more than hatred, it would kill them all. Their lives – Clara's life – depended on him saving the creature's soul.

How could he do it? So many victims. He remembered Laszlo's absurd, unhappy face; Dalek Sec's tentacles waving grotesquely above his business suit; Edwin Bracewell's pleading eyes behind their glasses as the bomb inside him counted down; the children screaming in the war-torn streets of Arcadia City. He remembered Oswin Oswald …

"_Doctor … " _Rusty's stiff voice faltered. _"What – is – that?"_

Oswin Oswald. Clara, if he'd only known then; a fragment of her soul scattered into the twenty-ninth century. His hands on her casing, his face against her eyestalk. _"I'm so sorry."_

_"You – do – not – hate – this – Dalek." _

"I couldn't," said the Doctor, and his voice broke. He thanked his stars that Clara was not there to witness this.

Clara. Oswin. Her lovely voice, meticulously programmed so that her distress calls would reflect the young human girl she was. Her shameless twenty-ninth century flirting with "The Nose and the Chin", her soufflés, her technological genius, her love of Bizet's _Carmen._ Her horror and rage when she re-discovered what the Asylum had done to her.

"_Exterminate! Exterminate!"_

"_Oswin, no! Remember who you are!"_

And then a bizarre, heartbreaking sound which the Doctor had never heard before: a Dalek trying to sob.

"_Run … run - you – clever – boy – and – remember …"_

He couldn't hate Oswin for the life of him. And the more he thought of her, the more he remembered the others: Tasha Lem, battling Dalek hate with human anger; Sec, bravely and futilely trying to lead his colleagues in a less violent direction; van Staten's prisoner begging Rose to set it free; even Rusty, perfectly repaired and perfectly evil, who only moments ago had confided its emotion at the birth of a star. _Resistance is futile. Life returns; life prevails._

"Of course," said the Doctor, throwing up his hands. "Of_ course_!"

"_What – is – this – feeling – Doctor?"_

Amy's hand on Bracewell's forehead. _Hey, Paisley … ever fancied someone you shouldn't? It hurts, yeah? But kind of a good hurt. _

The disbelief of the battered Ironside Daleks as they heard the heirs they had created order their extermination. The men and women tortured on operating tables in Davros' sick attempt to create the perfect army. The lone prisoner whom Rose had touched opening his armor to feel the sun.

Rose.

Clara.

"It's compassion, Rusty. How does it feel?"

"_It … feels … it feels … "_

The fierce red light pulsing around the Doctor's miniaturized body turned softer. Something bright and warm flickered back and forth across the mind-link. He sensed Rusty power down his weapons and prepare a message to call off the Dalek fleet; since it had no words to express even remotely how it felt, it let its actions speak instead.

"That's good," whispered the Doctor, smiling so widely he felt his face might split. "Och, that's verra good! Remember this, my friend. Make it a part of you. Live by it! You're just victims, all you Daleks, forced for millennia to be cannon fodder in a war for which we canna remember the reason. But that can change – it has to! You could be the beginning, Rusty. If _you_ can be saved from what was done to your ancestors, so can all of you!"

"_Affirmative!" _Rusty's voice reminded him irresistibly of Oswin. _"Life – is – sacred. Life – must – be – protected. Extermination – on – both – sides – must – end!"_

The Doctor grinned up at the cables surrounding him as he thought of Clara. Was she hearing this? Would she still say, _I don't know_, with such an anxious little frown, when he asked her if she found him a good man?

He'd never tell her - the girl was domineering enough already – but where would Journey Blue, her uncle and the rest of them, and Rusty be without her? Where would _he _be without her?

Lost, that's where. His first face. His compass star.

"Do I pay you?" he'd ask her later, only half joking. "I should give you a raise."

"You couldn't afford me," she'd retort, but the warmth of her smile would carry him through many a solitary night.


End file.
